adventures in acting & stand-up

Archive for the tag “TwitterQuest”

So long and thanks for all the phish

It had been going quite well recently. I’d incorporated TwitterQuest into the stand-up show I’ve been previewing for the Edinburgh Festival, which had generated quite a few new followers. After just seven months (not eight, as I mistakenly told the world just now… read on; I’ll explain), I had peaked at 2,287 Silent Witnesses. I was looking forward to seeing how many more I might accrue during the festival next month.

After a happy spot at a gig last night, compere Lewis Bryan (@lewisbryan) had kindly, and unasked, told the audience they really ought to find me on Twitter and follow me. They’d see why when they found my profile, he said. When I turned on my computer an hour or so ago, I was thrilled to see a couple of them actually had.

Yes, I’ve deleted the address. I’m not giving them another chance to profit from me.

My apologies, of course, to everyone who received it. I suppose there’s an irony that the spam should have been advertising a diet. One person, a couple of months ago, did try to get me to tweet by sending a series of incredibly rude messages about what a “fat, ugly c***” I am, so maybe he’ll see this as a victory.

But I’m rather sad that it should have ended this way. I’ve been publicly quiet, but privately, I’ve enjoyed exchanging messages with a few of the people who signed up to this nonsense and seemed to enjoy the ridiculousness of it as much as I have. One person has regularly checked in to ask how it’s going, and to encourage me to continue doing nothing! Others, such as the brilliant comedian, James Acaster (@JamesAcaster) would occasionally taunt me with:

Well, the silence has been broken, so TwitterQuest must end. It took me a few minutes to even work out how to do this, but about 20 minutes after the “spam diet” tweet, I finally sent my first actual one:

Dammit. Not only have I been hacked, I’ve had to find out how to send a tweet. Game’s over. Thanks to everyone for joining in. It was fun x

Even by then, my followers had dropped by about 30, and I absolutely agree with their actions. More have left since then, and I suspect I may now be watching the numbers fall with the same fascination which grabbed me while watching them rise.

I’ve received a wonderful series of messages from other people today, which prompted my next tweet, a two-parter because I haven’t mastered this 40 character thing yet; I’m very new to all this:

… Many have left since the tweet. I’ll decide this week whether to delete the account
or actually use it for tweeting.

So, thank you for all the support; followers, RT-ers, ff-ers (see how I’ve picked up the lingo!) and others. Particularly those who took the trouble to sign up to Twitter just to follow me! It really was ridiculously enjoyable while it lasted. I can’t explain why, and that was part of its joy. If you want to stop following me now, I’ll completely understand. If you’d like to stay, you’d be more than welcome to do so. I can’t imagine I’ll be using Twitter very much anyway, so it’ll still be a semi-silence.

In the next few days, I’ll either set up a new account and tell everyone what that’s called, or I may just stick with this one and see what happens, so long as I don’t get hacked again, of course.

Just for fun, here’s my “Mentions” page from the time of the spam tweet until just before I posted this up:

THE STOP BOYS

I’ve said here before that the unexpected joy of TwitterQuest has been making contact with great people I’d never otherwise have “met”. Here’s a private message I received a few days ago:

You – a twitterer that doesn’t twitter We – a boy band that doesn’t consist of boys or perform. We are soul mates somehow. Must join forces?

I replied:

Inspired! Yes, we must cross-promote at every appearance we make… Truly soulmates!

These guys describe themselves as “the highe$t gro$$ing, non-performing Boy Band in the northern part of Eastern Central Florida”, and they’re clearly working hard to maintain that position. Do have a look at their website: http://thestopboys.com/ and be sure to watch their videos. They do it all for the fans and they just won’t STOP.

They also have one of these FaceBook pages that you can click ‘Like’ on. That’s at http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/TheStopBoys I’d love to see them with millions of ‘Like’-ers. Go on. They won’t bother you. And they’re clearly decent people.

Thanks to everyone who’s tweeted about me recently. It’s always a huge thrill when that happens. The total continues to rise (2,192 at time of writing), but I could do with another big name sponsor to generate the next avalanche of new followers. So, if you can think of anyone this might appeal to, do please ask them to retweet – see how comfortable I’m becoming with the language now?! A couple of people I’ve never met have been kind enough to mention me on internet forums recently, and someone at a gig last night even said she’d heard TwitterQuest spoken about on the radio the other day, so we’re on our way!

My favourite tweet recently was from the comedian Rob Callaghan, who’s been a supporter from the beginning:

One of these people is Katie Porter (@EternalKatie). She lives in Beavercreek. I think that’s somewhere in America.

I think that because, when I sent her a message today to thank her for becoming my 2,000thfollower (yay!!), she replied, “Awesome!”, which suggests she’s American, doesn’t it. Also because she heard about me from a retweet by a Hollywood actor / producer / director.

Not him. That’s Stuart Laws, who I’m always going on about on here. I just thought it was time you had a look at him, in case you haven’t seen him in a comedy club yet, or visited his blog (http://stuchopslaws.wordpress.com – he’s put up a new post today with a couple of videos which I think are very funny. Especially the break-in one). No, Stuart did a tweet about me to Judd Apatow, who you’ve seen in loads of American films and TV shows.

This is Judd Apatow. He holds an entirely different camera to Stuart, and in an entirely different way. Which is possibly how he came to produce the movies Anchorman, Fun With Dick & Jane and The 40 Year Old Virgin, among many others. Actually, he directed the last one too. He also directed Knocked Up and Funny People, and… Well look, there’s all sorts of information about him on the internet if you want to know more. Suffice to say, I was thrilled that he chose to let the world know about TwitterQuest.

But others loved the idea, and Stuart’s original message has been retweeted all over America this evening. And Scandinavia, Ireland, Germany and goodness knows where else too. The new followers are still coming in. So, thank you Stu, thank you Katie, and thank you Judd. The latest heroes of TwitterQuest.

Oh, and thank you @bagtheneematoadwho, as this goes to press, is the latest of 2,078 followers.

By the way, Mr Laws is no shrinking violet in the film production stakes. Check out his hugely popular ‘Becoming Batman’ series on Youtube. It’ll open up a whole new world to you. Episode one (of many) is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZYc1G09c7E

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the tweet of someone who understands TwitterQuest. As I have said before, I’m aiming for pointlessness on a global scale. And I really think we can achieve that!

There’s been another burst of activity today, which has put 2,000 followers tantalisingly within grasp. This has been achieved by the tweets of friends I’ve actually met, new friends I’ve virtually met and a few… I’m sorry for using this term, but, well… ‘names’. They’re the people who bring in hundreds of new Silent Witnesses with one tweet. But everyone’s contribution is hugely appreciated. All (at time of writing) 1,745 followers are ‘names’ to me!

I’ve emailed a few (by which I mean fewer than 15 so far) much-followed people about this utterly pointless project. They’re either people I already respect, or in some cases, they’ve struck me as jolly types associated with technology, who I’d never have known about but for TwitterQuest. Some don’t reply, but a heartwarming number do. A Hollywood based comedian’s ‘people’ liked the idea but for some reason couldn’t pass my message on to the person I’d thought I was writing to. One technology type replied with “what’s in it for me?” , which rather took me by surprise. I said they’d probably be mentioned here, but mostly what was in it for them was fun. They replied with a list of links to something called apps (whatever they may be) which they wanted to sell.

It doesn’t work like that. Sorry. TwitterQuestis pointless. That’s the point.

No, the sort of people I want on board are people like @leehutchinson! And the comedian Mark Steel (http://www.marksteelinfo.com), who took the trouble to reply to my email with this:

Hello Richard, sounds splendidly useless, as soon as I remember I’ll follow you for no reason. Let’s see if you can catch up with Fry and Katy Perry. Cheers, mark.

Now, THAT is precisely the sort of might-do attitude I’m looking for!

He hasn’t tweeted for me yet, but he will. Or might. If only everyone displayed that level of commitment to futility!

A few days ago, the good people of Viz did another tweet for me (thank you; a lovely surprise), which took the total up to about 1,240. Today, I sent emails to broadcaster Andrew Collins (http://wherediditallgorightblog.wordpress.com) and actor / author / presenter (etc.) Emma Kennedy (http://www.emmakennedy.net), both of whom were kind enough to tell their followers about me.

So @RichardRycroft is trying to be the most followed person on Twitter who never Tweets. It’s just for fun. #ff

Thank you both. It’s a wonderful thing to see 500 people adding themselves to the movement in the space of a few hours.

And please be assured that when I promise to ‘follow back’ (as I believe it’s called) everyone who follows me, I don’t just have my account set to automate the process. I look at everyone’s profile and have found myself in some wonderful exchanges of personal messages (they’re not tweets) with people I have never met and probably never shall. That’s why, on a day like today, it takes quite a while for me to return the favour.

One of the unexpected benefits of this idiocy has been that I have found the world does seem to be mainly populated by good natured people after all. People who enjoy silliness and virtual silence and following nothing. People who choose to define themselves in their Twitter profiles by their religion, their politics, their sexuality, their job or their lifestyle (and many, many, many Dr Who fans). All lovers of silliness. My kind of people.

And many comedians and actors too. I was so excited today to find that two of my favourite actors have added themselves to the virtual calm. Tony Gardner (you’ve seen him as Michael in Lead Balloon) and Samuel West (who you’ve seen in, well, you know… all those great productions you’ve enjoyed so much) both signed up shortly after the Kennedy / Collins moment (as it shall forever be known). An honour to have you both aboard.

Now the, er…

After someone had retweeted for me earlier today, scouse_craig replied

Well, that stopped me in my tracks, I can tell you. TOTDS (the one that doesn’t tweet) has 10,570 followers, and follows just 42. That’s all I know. Their profile page has a link to BBC Radio 1’s website, but I can’t find any information on there about it, so maybe this is something that lapsed a while ago? Can anyone fill me in about it? Please leave a comment if you can.

This changes NOTHING!

It does give me a target to aim for, of course, and if the mighty national music station Radio 1 can achieve 10,000 followers, that just makes my 1,700 in three weeks all the more wonderful. Has TOTDS made new friends through Twitter? Has TOTDS had his / her world view improved by the experience? Well, clearly I don’t know. But I’m in competition with no-one and it’s too much fun to give up now. The more silence providers the better, I say. Let’s be quiet in harmony.

But I can now tell you that this man became my 1,000thfollower today. He is @RoOkin, he dislikes most foods and he lives in Chichester. That’s all I know. But he’ll always have a special place in my heart.

As will this man

Richard Herring (@Herring1967) is one of my favourite comedians – go and see his ‘Christ On A Bike’ show, whatever you do.

In an idle moment this afternoon, when I should have been booking my slot at this year’s Edinburgh Festival, I dropped him an email at his website (www.richardherring.com). I didn’t honestly expect to hear back from him. But a couple of hours later, I received an excited phone call from a friend saying I should look at my Twitter numbers.

I’d already been thrilled that I’d climbed up to 695 in the last couple of days, but was getting a little frustrated at not yet reaching the elusive 700. Well, I was now, 20 minutes after Richard’s tweet, in the high 800’s and still they came. When it reached 995, I had to phone someone to steady my nerve as we each refreshed the page and saw the numbers steadily climb. It was like a virtual New Year countdown. We plateaued for a few minutes on 999. We refreshed…, we refreshed again…, and finally… 1,000.

Thank you, Richard, and thank you @RoOkin. I never realised having a Twitter account could be so exciting!

The number of visitors to this blog thing have been phenomenal today as well, so thanks to everyone who’s had a look around and played the videos, etc.

As this goes to press, I have just passed the 1,100 mark. That’s 1,100 people following me BECAUSE I never tweet. I can’t begin to tell you how happy this is making me. We’re on our way to global pointlessness, guys!

I still have lots of people to ‘follow back’ and I might not get to everyone tonight or tomorrow, but rest assured, I’ll be returning the compliment as soon as possible.

After Launching TwitterQuest (see the post before last, or click on https://richardrycroft.net/2010/12/28/twitterquest/), I managed, during those quiet days leading up to and just after the New Year, to attract a few extra followers (or, as I prefer to think of them, Silent Witnesses), thanks to friends doing a tweet or two on my behalf. Notably @DavidTurners (one of the guys behind the JoyPod podcast for gamers – more info at http://spong.com/joypod) and @davebromage (funny comedian and journalist, who has a blog here on WordPress, at https://davebromage.wordpress.com/). Many others tweeted too, including the comedians @joselby (http://www.joselby.com/), @ashleyfrieze (http://www.incredible.org.uk/), @stuchopslaws (http://stuchopslaws.wordpress.com/ as you probably know by now) and @philiphiggins (who doesn’t seem to have a website. Good Heavens. Odd chap). I’m incredibly grateful to everyone who’s joined in so far. Sorry if I haven’t mentioned you this time.

It was Dave Bromage whose tweet reached the attention of @VirginRacing, the official F1 Virgin Racing team (http://www.virginracing.com/). I switched off the machine last night, pretty pleased with my total of 136 followers. When I returned to it this morning, there were over 100 notifications in my email inbox, of new followers as a direct result of Virgin Racing tweeting about the cause to its almost 29,000 followers. But it didn’t end there. Followers retweeted and more came. And then the folks from Viz got involved.

With almost 67,000 followers, @VizTopTips (http://www.viz.co.uk/) must be one of the most retweeted Twitter users in the UK (and abroad, as it now appears), so I thought I’d let them know what I was up to. I thought the pointlessness of the challenge might appeal to them. I was right. Within half an hour of my email, they had very kindly told the world about me, and the new follower notifications flooded in! At the time of writing, I now have 547 followers.

By the way, there’s absolutely no commercial side to my TwitterQuest. I’m just acknowledging people who have joined in the fun, that’s all.

Here are some of my favourite comments which have been generated on Twitter today:

If you’d like an extra follower, follow @richardrycroft, who is aiming to be the most followed person never to have tweeted. Thank you 🙂 (@VirginRacing)

Now following @richardrycroft as amused by his anti-celeb anti-Klout approach to Twitter. (@TMT_Lawyer)

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FOLLOW @richardrycroft who provides a restful silence in the often noisy Twittersphere. (@VizTopTips)

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@richardrycroft Nice one Richard, hope it catches on! No need to reply to this message or re-tweet. (@David_Joseph)

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@richardrycroft But I bet every morning you wake up in a sweat and check Twitter to see who’s following/unfollowing 🙂 (@OnewordTF)

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Postmodern tweeters: @richardrycroft and @big_ben_clock(@CarkeysCoUK – and you might be interested to learn that @Big_ben_clock tweets the appropriate number of “BONG”s on the hour, every hour, to more than 78,000 followers. He / she / it doesn’t appear to follow anyone at all, but that didn’t stop me from signing up, and I would urge you to do the same!)

I refuse to follow @richardrycroft unless he gets ‘verified’. Otherwise, how do I know it’s him & not a scam to steal my personal identity? (@sexteta, who later followed me anyway. Maybe he looked at this blog thing and was reassured? Or perhaps it was a computer-savvy person’s joke that I didn’t understand?)

I love the idea that some people have started challenging one another to get a tweet out of me! In fact, I urge any tweeters reading this to consider adding something like “what would @richardrycroft say about this?” if you have characters to spare at the end of a tweet.

As promised, everyone who follows me is being followed back, or sent a ‘follow request’, depending on their security settings. On a day like today, that takes quite a while (and some days I don’t see my email at all – I don’t carry the internet on a phone in case it gets scratched, remember), so if I haven’t followed you within a few hours, please be assured that I shall. Curiously, while I get email notification about the vast majority of new followers, some slip through the net, so I do check the whole list from time to time as well. If you think I might have overlooked you, please leave a comment here, or contact me through Twitter. If you don’t want me to follow you, just ignore or delete me from that list, but PLEASE keep following me.

ps Just as I was about to publish this, both @VirginRacing and @DavidTurners tweeted about me again (thank you!) and brought another flurry of activity into the Rycroft home. As this goes to press, I can claim a TwitterQuest total of 642 and rising. One of the latest additions to the Silent Witnesses even tweeted this:

As earlier posts on this blog thing will have told you, I’m useless around technology. I have a FaceBook page and a MySpace page. And this blog thing. If pushed, I can even download music now, which in my world is like putting a man on the moon – I’ve done it three times so far and, while I could do it much more, there’s a fiscal deficit to be dealt with first.

I even signed up to Twitter a few months ago.

Why?

That’s been my biggest question about Twitter ever since I first heard of it. I’m happy for the people who love it, but I just couldn’t see how it could possibly benefit the life I live.

Now cut to circa 1981 when a friend was telling me about this “computer” thing he’d bought. It took ages to fire it up, with a high pitched signal that he had to play in from a cassette machine, and when it did come to life, its black and white (or was it green on a black screen? I think it may have been) flashing courier writing had, for me at least, all the sex appeal of a heart monitor and none of the usefulness. Yet he insisted this was the future and I ought to be part of it. “We do everything on it now”, he told me. “Well, what?”, I asked. “Everything! Christmas card lists… everything.”

He kept his Christmas card list on it. That’s what computers were for in 1981. They’d never catch on. How could a computer “do everything”? Ridiculous.

I lost contact with that guy. I heard from his ex wife a couple of years ago, but he’s not on FaceBook, so we’ll probably never see one another again.

Well, obviously, computers slowly crept up on me. Then came something called email which was exciting initially but became just another thing to fall behind with (current backlog is 142- not a personal record), then the internet… you get the picture.

And one day, a comedy promoter who’s quite hard to get seen by announced that any future opportunities to perform at his club would be advertised exclusively on Twitter. I had no option. If that was the only way to find out about spots at a club I want to perform at, obviously, I had to sign up.

But I didn’t have anything to say. So I thought I’d wait a while before doing my first tweet to the world. A few months passed. Friends heard I’d joined, so ‘followed’ me. I ‘followed’ them. After quite a short time, I stopped visiting the site, but would still occasionally receive an email telling me of a new ‘follower’. Mostly people I had never heard of. A couple of them supposedly gorgeous young women looking to er, “hook up”. They must have seen my photo and thought “phwoarrr. He’s someone I ought to be following”.

Just before Christmas, I started being followed by someone who works in PR. Probably befriending several comedians that day as that’s the area in which he specialises. Which is a perfectly sensible thing to do and I’ll think of him next time I want and can afford a PR.

I’ve never tweeted. I never expect to tweet. Yet strangers follow me. They follow someone who doesn’t say anything. Ever. They clearly enjoy the calming silence I offer, the oasis of serenity in a noisy twittodesert. More people should have the opportunity to benefit in this way. It’s my gift to the world.

So I mentioned it on my FaceBook page and few new people started following me. My friend Jane Hill of the Milky Drink Kids (@janehill64) mentioned me on Twitter itself today and I gained another 20 or so. Then my friend Tony Cowards (@TonyCowards) mentioned it and more came flooding in. At the time of writing, I now have 50 followers. 50 people who don’t want to miss a word I won’t say. This is becoming a popular movement. Like Live Aid. Or something. But quieter. And of less use.

Won’t you join me in this TwitterQuest? All you have to do is let everyone know that @richardrycroft is hoping to become the most followed non-tweeter on Twitter and the rest will follow. Stephen Fry currently has 2,065,574 followers (which is 376 more than when I checked about three hours ago). That’s just 2,065, 524 more than me. This is eminently do-able, people!

If you’re not already signed up to Twitter, join today and follow me. You don’t have to do anything else. In fact, the less you do, the more palpable your commitment to the cause. I already have one follower who has never tweeted. Join the chorus of silence!

Additional information

Stephen Fry has added another 11 followers since I wrote the above

I have added 30

Every time I’m notified of a new follower, I follow or send a request to follow them, depending on their security settings. It’s my way of letting them know I’m a real person, and of saying thanks for playing along. If you follow me and don’t want me to follow you, just delete me from your followers; I shan’t be offended. But please keep following me. Your followship feeds my silence.

Some people have been a little confused about this project. “Why follow someone when you learn nothing at all about them?” asked @kyleorchid. @ Peapod1974 said, “I would follow @richardrycroft but he seems to want to beat @stephenfry for some reason? What’s the competition?” Happily, Jane was able to reassure them that my intentions are pure, and they’ve joined the gang. It’s just a bit of fun, you know.

My favourite tweets today have been: “That’s the equivalent of saying “Listen to me, I’m not going to say anything” and then trying to get a crowd together” (@Huggibear) and “Will be interesting to see how high he can get. Fascinating idea. A million followers following nothing :)”(@bosunrsa).

Thanks to everyone who’s joined in so far. Any comments?

ps I’ve just found an interesting blog by an American guy called Dustin Curtis at